Conversation-starters

London – The branding for this year’s D&AD Festival not only celebrated creativity but questioned its meaning.

The graphic designs featured a mix of jokes, poems and phrases that reflect the importance of creativity

A Franklin typeface was stretched and distorted to represent different voices and perspectives

Agency The Beautiful Meme created about 100 pieces of work designed to provoke debate on creativity, while representing the variety of voices present at this year’s festival.

‘All those voices are going to have a different opinion about why creativity matters, or what creativity is,’ says Tom Sharp, one of the creative directors at The Beautiful Meme and part of the team that developed the visual identity for the festival. ‘What we didn’t want to do was create a very single-toned campaign.’

The typographic artworks were designed to appeal to a mix of students, young professionals and veterans, and to make light of an industry sometimes guilty of taking itself too seriously.

The Beautiful Meme also created graphics without text, a visual-first identity that appeals to Gen Viz, made up of stock pictures from festival sponsor Shutterstock and winning projects from previous years.

The Big Picture

Ahead of this year’s D&AD Judging Week, LS:N Global spoke to some of the judges about where the design industry is headed next. See our preview for more insight.